Why I'm Not A (Nigerian) Feminist

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - There are two ways to describe patriarchy. First, as a sociopolitical system marked by the privileging of men over women. Second, as an unfair system with a conscience which, without any real, palpable threats, admitted its own mistakes and injustices and made amends. A system that refused to call the bluff of feminine logic, that turned against its own gender and cut itself to size. Feminism owes a large part of its success to the support of men. 

A trite remark, nonetheless it is necessary to help us avoid the danger of a single story. Patriarchy has been so demonized you'd think it's all sour grapes: a system that is, arguably, responsible for the glory of the developed world as we see it. The skyscrapers, the physical developments, the moon landings, the technological revolutions that make life easy today—all owe their actualisation largely to patriarchy, to men who worked the dirt spreading bare backs in the sun to build our infrastructures—but these are ignored by the single story. To this point, we shall return later.

There are at least three major areas of human empowerment: politics, economy, and culture.

Politics: Are there specific Nigerian laws that are anti-women? Perhaps. If there are, what do you do? Mobilize a legal machinery to dislodge them. Does the Nigerian constitution discriminate against women in political participation? I'm not aware. In any case, there are more female than male voters in Nigeria. So we can say, theoretically at least, that women have untapped political power. 

Economy: In the public sector, I'm not aware if there are any anti-women policies. If there are, the ministry of women affairs should be able to challenge them. In the private sector, emphasis is on competence rather than on gender. There may be exceptions.

Culture: There are many elements of women discrimination in several cultural spaces within Nigeria. Property inheritance, polygamy, social discrimination, etc. Culture, which includes social perception and engagement, is where the major problem lies. This aspect pours into every other thing so much that, even with a level political or economic playing field, women will still have problems. It is the reason a woman can compete in an election with a man less qualified and still lose, because, perception. Because, prejudice. The laws can regulate what you say or do, but not what you think. It's like this: a member of a minority ethnic group is complaining that his stock has not been allowed to rule Nigeria, and we retort that there's nothing in the laws stopping him from contesting.

In other words, women mostly have a perception problem: a public relations problem.

Perception is a public relations subject. I trained as a public relations person and I know there are meaningful approaches to solving wrong perception. Rabble-rousing is not one of them. Failing to appreciate context in feminism; mudslinging and turning those who reject the identity and the megaphone of aso-ebi feminism into victims of intellectual snobbery, sometimes even victims of a noisy ignorance—these are not strategic approaches to solving wrong perception—in fact, they can further deepen it.

There is substance to the endless venting. The Nigerian girl-child is coming from a far, ugly place and has legitimate accusations against patriarchy and therefore the anger is totally understandable, if not justified. Social awareness becomes a means of both expression and mobilization. Against what? Patterns of thought. You have the legislation and all that, so you are not protesting a lack of paperwork for equality. You are fighting against how people think. You are going to bully people to think in a certain way? How are you going to achieve that? With unintelligent anger, you will create hate, not awareness. Is there any organized feminist movement in Nigeria, with a clear strategy to counter bad gender stereotypes?

Wrong perception of women is borne by both men and women. Popular feminism is unwilling to own the failure of women in the whole conversation, a thing patriarchy did. Where being a feminist is to endlessly parrot anti-men rhetoric, bully, and shame decent conversation, elevate pettiness to occupation, those incapable of psychological violence will stay away. I'm one of them.